


Skin Game

by Kinkshame_Heathcliff



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Fangplay, M/M, Minor Character Death, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Scammer Robin, Stalking, Vampire Billy Hargrove, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:13:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22930804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kinkshame_Heathcliff/pseuds/Kinkshame_Heathcliff
Summary: If there was one thing Steve wished most for in life, it was that his wet-dreams were prophetic more than pathetic.Well, that, and hairspray that didn’t leave awful buildup in your roots.But— given the option, he’d definitely choose the former.OrThere's a new boy at school, Steve has nightly wet dreams that may or may not be prescient, and somehow the two appear interconnected.You know, an average AU.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 3
Kudos: 99





	Skin Game

If there was one thing Steve wished most for in life, it was that his wet-dreams were prophetic more than pathetic. 

Well, that, and hairspray that didn’t leave awful buildup in your roots. 

But— given the option, he’d definitely choose the former.

Wet dreams were so blissful and mysterious, triggered by who knows what, and only lasting until your subconscious stamina reached its peak. 

The after wasn’t as much fun. Stained sheets, sweaty skin, general confusion.

It was like picking up the pieces of a mystery where you’re the culprit and detective. 

Steve had always had vivid dreams. He could recall early ones stretching back as far as seven years old. They were more frequent then, but decidedly more obscure. 

Ominous figures dwarfing buildings as they glided down the cul-de-sac noiselessly. Large icy bodies of water not contained by the limits of their shores. Pop quizzes that suspiciously never seemed to end no matter how many pages were flipped through. 

During those first few years it became common fodder that half of what Steve said began with “I had this crazy dream last night”.

He couldn’t be blamed though— it was as if his mind was working on overtime while he slept, leaving his normal waking self to sift through whatever hidden messages must’ve been conveyed the night before.

Only it really didn’t work that way. There were no giant dark entities stalking his lawn, or surprise tests the day after he’d dreamt one, what there was were little jabs, quick jeers, that eventually one day became:

“Steve, would you shut up about your stupid dreams— you sound like a fuckin’ fairy.”

Tommy sat across from him on the bus, having mustered all his thirteen year old spite to send his message home.

And it did.

He stopped talking about them. His mother and father seemed indifferent about it, but retrospectively it’s doubtful they even really listened in the first place.

For a time it seemed like maybe he’d been speaking the dreams into existence, that by sharing them regularly he was triggering the chemical in his brain that would cause him to have the next dream. 

For a week he only had thoroughly normal dreams. The type of normal dream that slipped through your mental fingers like a runny egg. A wash of unremarkable, unmemorable visions.  
It was the 29th of October when that changed. 

October is such a strange month because it’s never quite sure what it wants to be. Some days are chilly to the point that layers are necessary, and others beat down with a taxing heat reminiscent of summer— but with pumpkins. 

He’d tucked himself into bed at 10pm and barely dipped his feet into sleep when the familiar stream of visions began.

Cold, very cold, but extremely bright. Rumblings of some type of auto mechanical beast, the different grindings and revving emissions seeming more lifelike than their source suggested. The source, completely surrounded in fog, the type of soupy thick fog that rolls off lakes in the early morning. 

Beyond that was the shadow of a person, pacing around in the fog interacting with whatever was causing the noises. Sometimes the figure would flicker in and out of focus, but always working. Hunching, cranking, observing, watching over the source.

The bright whiteness began to have a physical effect on Steve, his skin prickled in goosebumps and an odd tingling sensation danced around the back of his head, radiating around his skull. The cold began to be less noticeable.

Pleasure sprouted through him.

The figure stopped pacing.

Something impossible washed over him as the figure came nearer. 

In the same instant the form was finally taking a focused shape, he shot awake. Panting, writhing, and wet.

Pleasure is hard to wrap your head around when no one’s explained what it feels like. 

Sure, the body knows it feels fucking great, but he had no idea what to make of any of it. The dream or the milky white liquid sticking between his boxers and his softening penis. 

So he did what any concerned child would do.

He woke his father at once, and explained that he’d had a dream— no, not a bad dream, but an odd dream about noises a car might make, and a strange figure, and it ended with Steve: peeing white liquid in real life!

His dad had looked at him for a few moments before grasping him on the shoulder and bestowing to him in a hushed tone, as his mother was still asleep, congrats son, you just had sex.

It should be noted that, this choice of words would come back to haunt him.

He took his fathers turn of phrase at face value, and thus thought he was having a lot of sex.

He told his friends at school as much. 

Tommy still made fun of him for it. 

The dreams changed that night.

No longer were they amorphous and wide-ranging. Suddenly they became hyper focused, always featuring the same cast of characters, only occasionally introducing a new element or emotion. The figure always there. 

It was cold. The dampness was penetrating their clothes. The fog was rather thick. They seemed to be alone, characters without a past or a future, composed simply of their respective roles as dreamer and apparition, and united to each other not by a succession of events but by the play of a grave gratuitousness of the poetic fact: they were there, in the fog of the world. 

Physically they all took the same toll on him.

Waking up panting, heart beating out of his chest, post coital liquids coating his torso, and an intense confusion. 

So it’s with a vague cosmic hope he holds onto that his wet dreams are prophetic.

The fact is, if they’re not, he’s just gonna have to accept the fact that he’s completely neurotic, and most likely sexually afflicted. 

Terminally— that is. 

How does one cure, nightly nocturnal emissions?

Getting laid.

So he’d tried that. Numerous times. With: Jacky, Molly, Sarah, Rachael, Shannon, Crystal, and Brianne. 

It never changed anything though. After getting hot and heavy, and seemingly milking every ounce of sexual desire from his limp form, the siren song of sleep would lull him under.

And there was the figure again. And the fog. And the noises.

And the— mess.

That was a good way to describe his teenage life. 

One prolonged mess. 

He scratched at his leg under the sheets and felt bumps. 

Mosquitos loved Steve’s skin. Yesterday by the river he'd smeared himself all over with citronella but they still found a place, a narrow strip above his left foot that he must have missed. The bites make a sort of anklet. 

He’ll have to wear socks long enough to cover it today. 

His senior year of high school came with the omnipotence of a storm cloud, and the brewing promise of an all encompassing finality. 

He quickly fell into the rhythm of his morning routine, only pausing every now and then to consider his appearance. 

For his apparent neurosis karmically he was blessed with easy good looks. 

He didn’t think that in a cocky way, just in like, a self-aware way…right?

Robin would never let him hear the end of it if she knew he’d thought that.

She was one of only three people who knew the sexual nature of Steve’s hypothetical clairvoyance. At first she’d dug into him relentlessly, but stopped when she’d seen his face reddening. 

She occasionally asks if he’s still getting off to the sound of factory noises, a ghost, and depressing weather. 

Unfortunately, he is.

The school is abuzz with news when he drives in several minutes before the first bell. Word’s spread of a new boy transferring in. Someone said they’d seen him driving a nice car, someone else claimed they’d spotted him at the Main Street cafe the night before. 

No one had seen him that morning, though. 

Steve found Robin already inside her first period band room, diligently tuning a hopelessly, woefully out of tune clarinet. It wasn’t hers - Robin was ace at instruments - the sad piece of wood belonged to some middle schooler whose parents had heard Robin could fix-up any instrument into a work of majesty. Typically this claim was true, but even her masterful hands struggled sometimes. Robin didn’t mind the work, and Robin didn’t mind the cash. 

Instead of a hello she greeted him with two raised eyebrows, her mouth occupied with tearing awful duck noises from the clarinet. 

“Heard about this new boy? You’d swear he was a star with the way everyone’s talking about it.”

She lowers the instrument, and runs a hand tersely through her hair. She can’t stand not being able to tune it. Robin’s the kind of overachiever who takes to heart every bit of academic bullshit Steve casts off like dust. It’s the wrong time to smile at her disposition, but it’s hard not to. 

“Good morning to you too, Steve— no, I hadn’t heard anything about him until just now.”

She looks dejectedly back toward her lap where the wood is resting.

“It’s almost as if I spend all my days inside this room with all the most uninformed popular kids in school or something.”

She meets his eyes before smiling wryly.

Steve laughs freely now that he can tell Robin’s mood is set to improve. No one can make him laugh like her. It’s probably why she’s his best friend. 

“Tough break with the clarinet?”

Her face falls, and she puts a hand up.

"Don't wanna talk about it, Steve.”

“Oh, you don’t wanna talk about how gorgeous this dying goose sounds? I was under the impression you did.”

She’s still holding her arms to ward him off, but intuition tells him she’s smiling. 

“I always do this to myself, I say: ‘Yeah, of course Miss Roberts, I can fix Timmy’s Clarinet— no problem! When do you need it by? Friday, absolutely, you betcha’ and then I’m here breaking my back over some sad janky excuse for an instrument that was definitely locked in a mildewy basement for a millennia before being resurrected, all for a measly twenty dollars! It’s just— so…” she lets out a short breath and relaxes her arms, “Anyways, I think I’m gonna jack Andrew Peter’s after class today and swap it out for this fucking thing, it’s my only hope at this point.”

“Not a bad idea, honestly. Proud of your lack of morals.”

“I do not wanna hear it from you, Mr. I Paid Marshall Owens to Give me His Chemistry Test.”

Steve laughs again, throwing his hands up echoing her earlier position.

“No judgement here dude, just genuine admiration.” He checks his watch, “I do have to run though, Ms. Little is a total gorgon and presumably hates my guts as she said she’d ‘make a special case and expel me for tardiness’ if I was late again.”

She cocks an eyebrow at him in acknowledgement, the clarinet once again pressed firmly to her lips. 

A truly terrible noise comes out and her face tenses further. 

With skills like that it’s honestly a mystery to Steve how the ladies aren’t lining up for a chance to be with her. With just her fingers and mouth she can make a saxophone go from busted to beautiful, any sane person would want to know what she could do to them given the chance. In his opinion anyways. She’s not out, and Hawkins isn’t exactly a ‘friend of dorothy’, but still— those fingers!

His seat in English is a work of majesty. Located directly in the back row, and the farthest seat to the left, Ms. Little’s desk being in the front right of the room. So long as she isn’t prowling he can do essentially anything he wants during class. An essay due for next period’s History class, build a cassette player, the possibilities are endless. It’s useful on days like today when he’s up to his ears in the verbiage surrounding the Lord of the Flies.

He actually read this one— read the whole thing, fucking hated it. Sure it’s supposed to be an allegory, but what’s that compared to the actual style of the writing? It doesn’t have to be style over substance or vice-a-versa, but for the love of god It’s such a labor to get through, and not because it's dense, but because the book is so mind-numbingly boring that it could put a coke head to sleep. They kill Piggy, is that…the climax? He’s had better climaxes in dreams he can’t remember. 

So he’s not keen on having to listen to anymore yammering on about it. 

Nancy Wheeler is sharing her take on how the hot sand on the beach could be symbolic for wartime embargo tactics when the door opens. 

It was as if everyone in the room shared the same nerve that was piqued by the entrance of a stranger. 

A boy, maybe a little taller than Steve, stood in the frame, curly blonde hair framing his face, and a folded piece of paper in his hands.

Ms. Little is the first person to come to, and fully assume her position as baroness of the estate they’re all prisoners in.

“Can I help you, young man?” She asks in that bizarre clinical, but also affected tone teachers and librarians use. 

“Is this Ms. Lagrève’s French class?” The boy asks in the most butter rich inflection Steve has ever heard, each word more inviting than the last, the embodiment of a warm, flakey, puff pastry. 

“That’s a few doors down, room 221— not 212, common mistake.”

The boy doesn’t flush, or show any typical signs of embarrassment. He holds a kind of easy confidence that evades most people - even Steve would be seven shades of scarlet by now. Making that kind of an error with an audience is humiliating in a trivial but deep rooted way you can’t shake. 

Instead he grins.

“My mistake. Have a nice day, Ms…?” 

He offers her his hand. It’s the most salacious thing Steve thinks he’s ever seen. It must be the most salacious thing Ms. Little thinks she’s ever seen either because her face is now the color of a whoopee cushion. 

“Little, ah, yes, Ms. Little.”

She takes his hand for a moment and grasps. He pats her hand with his other hand, and just like that he’s gone, the door clicking closed behind him leaving a delightfully flustered Ms. Little in his wake.

She’s quick on the rebound though, blinking a few times, tugging her wool pencil skirt down to flatten any ridges, and turning back to her class.

“Right, Misses Wheeler, if you could please start from the beginning of your theory, I think it’d be best if we all heard the full thought again.”

—————————————————————————————————————————

Robin called Steve that night. She told him that the Clarinet swap was a success, and she now was twenty dollars richer, and if he wanted to join her for a movie it’d be her treat. 

He’d asked what was playing, and she’d rambled on about some art-house ménage à trois that interested her. He shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up by asking. 

Truth be told, on a typical day it might’ve piqued his interest too, but a sudden fatigue took hold of him and refused to let go. 

She’d complained about his ‘old-man sleep schedule’ for a minute before resigning herself to his early retirement. 

The line clicked dead, and he leaned back into his bed, setting the phone back on the receiver. 

He shuffled around to get in a more comfortable position, propping his feet up on a spare pillow, and letting out a long breath. 

The tension of the day released from his muscles steadily with each exhale. It wasn’t long before he fell into a gradual rhythm. 

The dream whisked over his consciousness like water filling a shallow river bed. The familiar forms gradually materializing as if he were pulling up shells from the sand in brackish water.

The mechanical noises buzzed and choked out their terrible cries. The fog rolled all around in its accustomed tempest. 

Then the figure came into sight, more spectral than ever tonight. Less recognizably human, more the shadow of a misshapen cloud. 

The whirring crescendoed into an almost unbearable cacophony, then just as quickly rumbled away. 

A car must have passed his window, he was sure of it. Sometimes outside noises broke into his slumber. What was most confusing about this was his ability to consciously recognize what was happening on the physical plane, given the subliminal nature of dreaming. 

The sound of a camera shuttering clicked.

The figure came into focus. Razor sharp clarity, not a single detail left hazily rendered. 

Before him stood the new boy from school. Hair shining golden in tight ringlets around his face, dressed exactly the same as he had been at school, down to the boots.

He looked at Steve. Everything came to a halt, the world and Steve. All the machines were stilled, the wind was gagged, the leaves on the trees didn’t dare a single flutter, everything frozen like musical statues, even the fog, except for him. He continued to move and go about his business and smile at Steve, as if nothing had happened. 

Steve came and the gossamer was broken. 

He woke with a start, physically shaking with desire. 

Dry air rushed into his lungs in heavy gulps. His mother must’ve had the forethought to turn the heating on before she’d gone to bed. His skin was lightly coated in a layer of sweat. He breathed. 

As soon as the last aftershocks of orgasm crossed through his body he shot out of bed regaining his previous vigor. 

Flushed and panting, he ambled tactlessly to the bathroom. 

He ran the tap and watched it disappear down the drain for a moment before using it to wipe away any cum still stuck to him. 

He addressed himself in the mirror and focused on his breath. Counting to five between intakes, trying to focus on making himself present. Making himself able to process what he'd just experienced. 

Somewhere far away in the night the noise came again. An animalistic rumble heavy with the sound of machinery.

He’d grown so used to hearing it in his dreams that for a moment he almost didn’t realize he wasn’t dreaming.

He looked himself in the eye, let out a breath, and said a quiet:

“fuck”

…………………………………..

He drives to school early the next day, parking his car adjacent to the main entrance before exiting to lean against the door, eager to be the first one arriving.

Then he waits. 

It’s cold today, and he slips his hands between his thighs in an attempt to warm his fingers. 

It’s to no avail though, the soft breeze in the morning carries a deceptively chilly tongue.

It’s not a long wait, but clocks seem too slow when you’re cold and anticipating something. 

Cars start to trickle in more regularly as the time passes, and the images of the night before shoot through his mind. 

He’s waiting for him. He sees him everywhere, and every far-off figure is a new arrival. When he doesn’t come, he still thinks it must be him, and every figure as it closes in is a disappointment. 

Until it isn’t.

The familiar mechanical roar sounds through the parking lot as the boy’s car pulls into an open spot, a light dust cloud hovering around the wheels. 

A girl gets out first, young, maybe twelve or thirteen. 

Then he gets out, cigarette stuck to his lip, eyes scanning round’, his hair the same striking golden as it was in last night’s dream.

He’s talking to the girl now, saying something harsh, Steve suspects by the way his face contorts, and how she begins to cower small but perceivably. 

He’s walking towards the entrance, and this is as far as Steve’s plan had gone. 

He hadn’t prepared any next step after: locate the new boy at school. 

Had no phrases formed or even anyway to approach the topic of: ‘Hi, I’m Steve! You were in my wet dream last night!’

The boy passes by Steve and for the first time since English yesterday he can hear him speak. It’s thick and commanding, but also boyish and cocky. There’s the fairest hint of an accent in it, but for the life of him Steve can’t place it. It’s definitely plausible that he puts on that buttery rich voice for select occasions, because his tone isn’t as unmitigatedly attractive now. Less sultry. It lasts two seconds and fades quickly to inaudibility as he continues down the bustling hall.

His breath returns, and he leans deeper into his spot on the wall.

He feels a camera click— a rolling shutter as a dormant piece of himself snaps into action. It’s not a dramatic realization, more an acknowledgement that something is more familiar than you’d previously suspected. 

He releases Steve from ordinary life in a perfectly ordinary way - just by the way he moves, by the way he moves and speaks. He has a different way of being.

He feels so familiar with him even though they’ve never met. It’s tragic. He’s so far away from Steve that he’s no more than an idea in his dreams. He is the very furthest thing there is.

But he’s right there, down the hall. 

Tommy comes out of nowhere and clasps him on the shoulder, halfway through some story about a girl he’d slept with the night before. There was a time when Steve would be more interested in listening. 

He slings his backpack around his shoulders and shakes off whatever spell had fallen over him. He lets himself be guided inside by Tommy. 

_______________________________________________________________

He had the whole day to catalogue the boy. To take mental pictures anytime they passed in the halls. To gently prod his friends for information without relaying his vested interest. 

His technique is clunky at best, but bears good results. 

His name is Billy. He’s from California, and according to Sharon, he "has a rockin’ ass”. 

He wears heavy leather boots, the kind someone who owns a motorcycle might wear, even with a slightly stooped look Steve couldn’t make out if there was a brand name stamped into the heel or thick leather of the vamp. 

On his back a sturdy jean jacket is pulled taut, and a lazily buttoned crisp, white, shirt covers his front. Both pieces remarkably unremarkable on their own, but combined, and with his general swagger, form some kind of alchemy. 

He lives in his body like a caged animal, every movement precise and calculated. It stands in stark contrast to what his appearance might suggest. His chest has been on display both days Billy had been in his life. Silver chains tangle around his neck, dangling against his smooth tanned skin only being interrupted by the occasional sparse sprouting of hair. A small, fine cross dangles from his ear, either ironically or devoutly. It’s impossible to tell given all the contrasts he possesses as a person. 

Lara said that first day before school when they’d all been gossiping in the parking lot that she’d seen him at the cafe, glued to the jukebox the night before. 

He might be a rockstar.

When Steve left school, he attempted to retrace the course of Billy's life, and, for greater efficiency, he got into Billy’s uniform, boots, and skin. Drunk with the somewhat blurry vision of a tall, young, Californian behind the windows of the cafe on Main-street where he was leaning against a jukebox listening to metal and popular rock ballads, he wormed his way into his past, gently and hesitant at first, feeling his way, when the iron toe-plates of one of his boots accidentally struck the curb. His calf vibrated, then his whole body. He raised his head and took his hands out of his pockets, the spell broken.

He was standing outside his house, wearing his Nike sneakers, the soft stroke of a breeze playing across his cheek, a gentle reminder of the chill. 

All he’d done that day was observe him on the sly, the boy next-door to his life. 

———————————————————————————————

Billy’s the first thing Steve can make out in the dream. The fog still whirls in thick sheets, and the grind and click of the machines still orchestrate the air, but Billy is in full focus, no longer obscured by the fog. 

He’s leaning against a wall (or what Steve assumes is a wall, objects never fully materialize in the dreams, they’re more like suggestions of a physical form), his shadow rippling over the edge of the pavement. Steve steps in it.

Billy looks him in the eye. It’s only now he notices how shockingly blue they are. They’re also bloodshot as if he’d been crying, or maybe smoking a bowl. 

He reaches out to Steve and grabs his waist, tugging him into his chest easily.

Steve’s legs wobble like Bambi’s, his whole demeanor quivering with desire like never before. His teeth chatter as if from the cold. 

Billy grinds against him, his own erection thick and hard in the front of his jeans. He’s holding Steve’s gaze firmly as he reaches his other arm between them, grasping Steve’s cock. 

He spits between them into his hand, still looking at Steve. It should be disgusting, but it only causes goose feathers to prickle Steve’s arms. He doesn’t talk at all, there’s no communication, only a consummation of mutual desire. Rubbing, stroking, grinding, panting. 

Their lovemaking continues through the icy fog, which veils it. Billy presses Steve against the wall and laughs as if it were a game, a kind of friendly bullying. 

It’s the first noise Billy’s made. 

Billy's kisses weren’t kisses, but smooches instead, like the play kisses a child might give you on the cheek or the neck. They made a silly, smooching sound and sometimes involved more teeth than Steve was accustomed to. Billy wasn’t a child, much less Steve’s. He kissed him like that all over, making a loud noise now, without tenderness, without apparent desire, playing, prodding, craving. His teeth scrape the inside of Steve’s thigh and break the skin.

He’s awake. 

The familiar mess is waiting for him on his belly.

A thick semen gel trail of hairs forming patterns like little whisks of meringue, or cartoon flames on his skin. 

The back of his head quivers and tightens as warm tears pool into his eyes. 

He was losing his mind. He was absolutely, losing his mind. Irrevocably so now. Sure, maybe if his parents had pursued treatment when he first mentioned the dreams as a child he could’ve been fixed, maybe given some pastel colored pills and some aggressive but effective reconditioning therapy, but he’d of been fine! Yet here he was, a few years shy of twenty, a terminally neurotic pervert fixated over a boy who couldn’t even pick him out of a crowd.

He can’t even imagine a normal sex dream. 

Can’t allow himself the sexual satisfaction of fulfilling the fantasy that’d danced just out of reach his entire life. 

Maybe he’d die if he did. Maybe his dreams weren’t prophetic at all, but the documentation of a deadly curse. Only coming to mortal fruition upon the completion of nocturnal coitus. 

Death by sex. 

He lets himself cry out right now. Cry for how alone he is. Cry for every night he’s spent using tissue, after tissue, to clean himself up and file away his desire into tidy folders in tidy filing cabinets. 

He wishes he could do the same with his desire. Sop it up, and cast it away.

_____________________________________________________________________

Steve’s memory of Billy is the stretched skin of a drum. At the slightest touch, it vibrates and resounds.

The previous night’s post coital clarity is ephemeral. It’s almost always the most crystal clear self reflection a person can have, but it never lasts. People are people, and they’ll go back to their old habits the second they feel even the slightest craving. Ask Steve how many times he’s quit smoking cigarettes only to light one a handful of days later on a whim, potential future career in sports be damned. 

Humans are just a doomed species. 

So he copes how he can. 

He idealizes the memory of making love so that he can avoid thinking about the negatives. The liveliest parts of his body become spiritualized, and Billy’s rod itself, which takes possession of his fingers, has the transparency of a crystal column. In fact, what he’s holding by the prick with his hands and pink lips is a fluid, milky body, a luminous fog that rises above his bed or over a wet lawn on which he’s lying.

He can dictate what his dreams are to him. They're his. He doesn’t have to muddy the waters by concerning his visages with reality. He doesn’t need Billy. He already has him filed away in the recesses of his mind. 

A kind of erotic self oscillation. A conceptual romance. 

It’s a bold idea and lasts until 11am, when between classes Billy bumps into Steve in the hallway. 

Billy looks at Steve— looks him in the eye. 

His eyes are impossible. The kind of icy blue only seen in fjords or adorning exotic birds in the deepest recesses of the amazon, they have no reason to be embedded like gems on the face of Apollo’s descendent. 

He smiles at Steve.

Says, “Sorry, didn’t mean to hit yah” in that velvety voice of his. 

His tone is unimaginably difficult to define. At once it puts you at ease, but also dripping with such a sweetness it causes intense subconscious anxiety. The same way you know the bright fluffy caterpillars are poisonous, or the frilled lion fish is deadly without necessarily being told. An evolutionary genetic reaction. 

It can’t be his actual voice. He can’t go around talking to everyone using that much charisma. 

Steve was quite certain that a time would come when that wonderful tone which was drawn from Billy would diminish his body, as a ball of yarn is diminished as it is used up, would wear it down to the point of transparency, down to a speck of light.

A rational, normal person would say something back noncommittal, a throwaway pleasantry, or maybe just grunt in acknowledgement. 

Steve’s not normal though, he can’t think of anything to say, he feels his stomach drop as if he’s about to have a panic attack because he can’t think. He can feel the hook pulling from the back of his nose making him question reality, that terrible ice cold feeling dripping from his temple. 

All because he can’t think when Billy’s looking at him.

Billy doesn’t seem offended by his silence, instead he cocks a grin and shoves his hands in his pockets. 

“Have we met yet? I’m new, so I don’t know everyone, but you fit the ticket for this King Steve I keep hearing about.” 

His eyes twinkle with something only known by the most radiant of summer night skies. His inflection is different though, something teasing, maybe even challenging. 

Tommy ambles up out of the blue, and stands behind Billy before draping an arm clumsily around his shoulder.

“Billy!” He over-enunciates the “L”s and extends the “Y” for some kind of comedic effect, “You haven’t met Steve-O?” 

Steve looks at Tommy and his brain starts to function again. Odd how someone lacking a brain cues his own to start again. 

“No, he hasn’t.” Steve puts his hand out.

Billy grabs it easily and squeezes firmly. There’s a soft peach fuzz of hair on his fingers, and his palm radiates a noticeable heat. It’s not sweaty, but not dry - like everything else about him it’s…ideal. His nails are trimmed short and a few have the tell tale signs of a nail biter. Some of his nails have a fine lining of dark debris shoved up under them. 

“I’m Steve Harrington.”

Billy smiles at him.

“Nice to meet you, Steve Harrington,” he ticks his head back and forth rhythmically as he says his full name, making a joke over the formality of it, “I’m Billy Hargrove.”

Steve wishes he could freeze time and just process all of this. His tone when he’s addressing Steve. The way his body language is relaxed, but calculated, maybe consciously to convey friendship, or calculated to only be perceived as that while concealing his real disposition. The way he smells. Clove, tobacco, leather and hints of what might be vanilla. It’s masculine, but subversively feminine too. Completely unexpected. 

“Likewise,” Steve replies after a moment, “Ignore everything anyone's said about me, even the good stuff. Most of it’s not true, and even the stuff that is, isn’t worth knowing.” 

Billy smiles at him and nods gently, his chin bobbing up a bit in a thoughtful expression. 

“You gonna let his hand go or stay like that all day, Steve?” Tommy teases him. 

Tommy is like a gangly, stupid hyaena. Loud, and cloying, and very rarely ever friendly. Much less tolerable in crowds or groups, but impossible to shake. 

Billy loosens his grip, and it alleviates some of the embarrassment knowing that he was as guilty of holding the gesture as Steve had been.

He drops his hand to his side languidly. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t you have somewhere else to fuck off to, Tommy?” He asks genuinely, but letting his voice raise slightly comically, turning to the boy.

He means it, but he knows Tommy will hear it as a joke instead, and for all intents and purposes it’s better not to have Tommy hate his guts. Tommy wouldn’t understand Steve’s focus right now, wouldn’t comprehend the gravity of it. The Steve that Tommy knew wasn’t so high-strung. 

The Steve that Tommy knew still had dreams with a ghostly apparition, no idea whether it was a boy or a girl, or a person or a goblin. Billy’s changed lots of things about and within Steve. 

Billy turns to leave, but Tommy stops him short. A hand lightly poking Billy’s chest. 

“Sarah Michaels is having a keg party tonight, you should swing by.”

Billy nods noncommittally at Tommy, then fixes Steve with the full force of his gaze once more. 

“See yah ’round, Steve.” 

Steve smiles and gestures in a way he hopes is friendly and casual. 

The air is lightly perfumed with Billy’s scent as he walks away. 

By now, he’d gotten an idea of what he smells like, and having an idea of somebody’s smell means you’re ready to start getting used to it. 

___________________________________________________________

There’s a theory held by men with long beards and women with purple crystals that within Earth’s gravitational pull is a twin moon. 

Nibiru. 

Nibiru revolves around us like a hidden leviathan, only making fugacious appearances under strict weather and atmospheric conditions. Those who believe in it believe in it full heartedly. They just know in their core that this massive chunk of rock and space dust is dancing around the Earth, existing in its orbit concealed like the best magic trick ever.

These people must have been in unrequited love. Must have known what it was like to revolve around someone else, to feel undetected and invisible yet omnipresent. 

The theory goes that in some undisclosed amount of time, Nibiru will be sucked in too close to Earth, and our gravitational pull with cause a cataclysmic series of events where the two planets collide. 

Those who suffer from unrequited love have a twisted sense of ideology, Steve thinks. 

Maybe he’d name his next car Nibiru, say it was something from Star Wars, his friends would never know. 

He’s following Billy again. Like he always does these days. A beer occupying one hand, while he combs the other gently through his hair. 

Billy looks like a rockstar against the backdrop of the party. Leather jacket moist from the wet heat of his skin, hair perfectly styled in that effortless but clearly intentional way. It was wild to Steve how no one else seemed to notice his radiance in comparison. 

He follows the boy upstairs, and through a bedroom before going out a small door onto a porch. The night was cold, but not uncomfortable. 

Billy turns on his toes and faces him in one swift motion.

“You gonna do it or what?” He asks in a clipped tone. 

Steve looks at him blankly, the cold can and the nippy weather beginning to chill his fingers uncomfortably.

He tenses. 

Billy’s looking at him, chest somehow still shiny with sweat regardless of the cold. Billy’s never cold. 

“You know you can, Steve?” He moves from across the porch to lean against the railing, his cigarette dangling from its spot, dried to his lip.

He’d let Billy put it out on his skin if he wanted to, sink it into his soft flesh, the wound cauterizing instantly as he shouted in agony or bliss. He’d let Billy do anything he wanted with him.

He takes a swig from his can and plucks the cigarette from Billy’s mouth between two fingers before bringing it to his mouth and inhaling. 

He lets his tongue worry along his bottom lip, imperceptibly trying beyond hope to get a taste. To know what he tastes like. It’s a futile attempt, and he has to pull it out of his mouth quickly in order to avoid suspicion. 

Billy’s still looking his way, eyes full of something unreadable. He was infuriatingly talented at concealing his emotions. Almost stoic in his impassivity. 

“Do it.” 

Steve lets out an exasperated breath. He hadn’t pegged Billy to be such a space cadet when he had a few drinks. 

“Do what, Billy?”

“Do what you wanted to do.”

He’d been beyond stealthy, there was absolutely no way Billy could’ve known he was trying to get anything more from the cigarette than a quick fix of nicotine. 

Billy’s eyes twinkled at him in the moonlight, his tone an easy command with no room for negotiation. 

So why not give in? Billy can’t read minds so there’s no way he’ll be able to figure out the truth.

Steve lifts the cigarette and takes a second long drag from it, this time in his exaggerated intake he has a chance to swipe his tongue over it. 

There’s not much of anything there, no overwhelming taste sparking across his tongue, but in his mind there’s a deep knowledge that Billy’s mouth had been where his is, and his tongue had too. 

That makes it all the more satisfying.

“Happy now? I wanted to keep smoking even though I quit, so I did.”

He grins at Billy as he pinches the still smoking cigarette between his fingers. 

Billy doesn’t mirror his expression, instead opting to continue smoldering in his direction. 

“You’re not a good liar, Steve.” 

Billy grabs a fistful of Steve’s shirt and crashes their lips together. 

If ever there were a moment in Steve’s confusing, little, life that we wished he could pause. It would be now. Take back all those false times before, because this was the big leagues. 

Unexpected was a term created for moments like this. 

Billy’s mustache scratches at Steve’s face as he kisses into his mouth. His hand not occupied with Steve’s t-shirt is resting on his ass.

It’s unreal. 

Maybe it is? He panics for a moment trying to remember every step of how he’d ended up where he is, no room for error, no room for: maybe I’m actually passed out in the bathroom right now about to wake up from one of my fucking dreams.

Billy squeezes his ass as he licks into his mouth and Steve groans.

Billy pulls away a fraction of an inch, letting out a small breathy laugh.

“You’re gonna have to keep it down, yah’ know, party and all that.” He says, gesturing to the chatter surrounding their hidden position on the balcony. 

“Yeah, yeah, shit— sorry.” Steve says and if more of his brain cells were firing synapses maybe he’d be embarrassed, but desire has taken the wheels of his mind on an ill advised bit of drunk driving. 

“You know you can do it, Steve.” Billy whispers against his lips.

“What, Billy, what can I do?!” 

“You don’t have to just look, you can touch me.” 

Steve kisses him with the full force of seventeen years of unattributed, unfulfilled desire. He sucks Billy’s bottom lip into his mouth and laps at it shamelessly. Wants to taste him, wants him to know how bad he wants it.

Billy responds enthusiastically pulling him into his body as Steve’s hands roam. 

He runs his hands over Billy’s perfect ass first, then his chest, relishing the little hairs between the firm muscles. Billy bites and nips at Steve’s mouth heatedly before switching to his neck.

He alternates between sucking and licking at the spot just below Steve’s ear, grinding into his front.

A bottle drops, shattering, and Steve pulls away quickly, putting as much distance between them as possible. 

Billy looks around as well, but makes no effort to move. Instead he lets out a small laugh, and points out past the yard to where Tommy and Eric have taken to breaking glasses in the street. 

“A bit too out in the open for you, eh?” Billy asks, his voice once more full of that irresistible charm. 

Steve looks at him wondering where he went wrong. What emotion had he failed to properly conceal, when had he slipped up and Billy had figured out his impossible infatuation. 

“How’d you know?” 

“Most people don’t jump back five feet over a small noise.”

“Not about that, about…” 

He makes a broad gesture in the air, hoping to somehow convey what he was struggling to say. 

How’d you know I had a massive crush on you. That I spent every waking hour for the past few weeks consumed with thinking about you. That I spent my entire life having wet dreams about you.

Billy matches his gaze and gives a small wink.

“I’m much more perceptive than I think you know.”

His eyes move across his face and down to Steve’s neck.

“Looks good on you.”

Steve moves his hand to rub at his neck, the beginnings of a hickey blooming on his skin. Robin is going to drag him over the coals for details about them tomorrow. He’s not quite sure what he’ll tell her yet. Maybe that Nancy Wheeler got too drunk and wanted more than that camera kid could give. She’d definitely pucker her face at that, she has a love hate relationship with stereotypical chauvinism. He’s never quite sure how much she picks up on what’s performative and what’s inherent. He’s not sure he does either and he’s the one doing it. Existing is a tightrope act he’s not yet mastered apparently. 

“Thanks, I guess.” He eventually says. 

“No guesswork about that, Steve. It suits you.”

When Steve was twelve years old the Indiana Hoosiers came to town for some youth health conference. The whole school got to sit in the bleachers as one of the best teams in America talked robotically about the importance of green vegetables. After the assembly Steve had run to the toilet to have a quick pee before having to go back to class, as he was washing his hands he noticed Scott Eells coming out of a stall. He was starstruck in the most innocent of ways, he desperately wanted to tell him how badly he wanted to succeed as a basketball player. How he wanted to join the team like he did. He was aware of the small amount of time he had to act, and the statistical impossibility of a chance encounter like this ever happening again. He dug his heels in and shoved both hands in his pockets. Turned to the man and said: “Hey. You’re Scott Eells— I’m a big fan”, and ran out of the bathroom before he even had so much as a chance to raise an eyebrow. 

It wasn’t the most graceful or nonchalant way to introduce oneself to a celebrity, but he admired his own resilience and determination to act upon desire.

So he could do this, he thought. He could talk to Billy about his dreams. Question him about his potential involvement, and maybe— fucking maybe, get to the bottom of his nightly emissions once and for all.

Steve dug his heels into the ground, and shoved both hands in his pockets.

“Billy, I don’t want to sound like a creep, or like I’m desperate, or neurotic, but I-I need to know if you’ve ever had a dream about me.”

Billy looks at him and his typically emotionless face cracks as a look of confusion washes over. 

He tilts his head to the side considering. He opens his mouth to answer then closes it.

“No, I haven’t, but there’s more to that than what you think.”

Steve feels himself flushing in embarrassment. It’d been a highly improbable theory, but he’d thought that maybe Billy had dreams about him too. Maybe they both were stuck in some kind of codependent curse. All that was washed away down the toilet by that last answer though. 

“I think I should go home.”

It was better to cut his losses while he could, and gather the fragments of whatever dignity he had left in the morning. 

He moved to turn but Billy grabbed his shoulder holding him in place. 

“Wait, it’s my turn to ask a question.”

It was convoluted logic, but given the scrappy nature of his own, he figured he did owe him as much. Also being physically held by Billy is irresistible. 

He nodded agreeing to the terms he’d supplied.

“What is it about me that you find so fascinating?” He asks, no hint of jest or humor in his voice, “I know that must sound ridiculously narcissistic, but it's very— very important for me to know.”

Maybe there was a convenient loophole he could slip through. Some breach in their very loose verbal contract that’d allow him to not have to answer the question.

“Steve, I have a bit of a reputation to uphold, you could say, and I need to know what you see in me to, er- correct that.”

It made sense then. 

Echos of Robin came to him in a genius moment that she’d definitely take the credit for even thought she wasn’t here. 

Billy was fucking gay!

“It wasn’t like that Billy!” He raises his hands in emphasis, “I had no clue you were a fuckin’ fairy! I swear! I was more shocked by tonight than anything— believe me— did not see the mouth to mouth coming.”

Billy breaks into laughter, reaching into his pocket to procure another cigarette. Lighting it after a few shaky attempts, his breath coming out in little gusts. 

“Wrong, Steve, very wrong. You’re not even correct in that assumption— but it’s meaningless; I mean, was there anything about me you found particularly— abnormal?”

“Billy you wear your shirt unbuttoned to your happy trail— I guess it wasn’t too hard for me to guess, but really I promise I’m only putting it all together now. I’ve got this friend Robin, and—”

“Fuck, Steve— listen to me, you’re wrong about that, we can talk about my impossibly good looks later, I need to know if there was anything— really, really— off about me.”

He looks at Steve with a weight in his eyes. His eyes were so bright right now they were almost dark. Another facet to add to the list of impossible things about Billy. 

Maybe that’s what he was getting at though? 

He'd already misstepped plenty tonight, so he racks his brain for a poignant example of why Billy fascinated him. He could’ve easily supplied a short novel of vignettes, but he decided to go with an initial oddity. 

“You don’t get cold.”

The smile dropped from Billy’s mouth. He takes a long drag from the cigarette and exhales.

“I have forgotten about that, haven’t I” He lifts his hand to his forehead and taps a few times in a self deprecating way, “I knew you were more observant than you let on— you know, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me those first few weeks. Originally I chalked it up to my own self obsession plus the barrage of attention from being the new kid— but it didn’t let up, and eventually I found your eyes on me more than once. Noticed you taking different routes in the hall to get closer to me. You could say I became as fixated on you as you were on me”

Steve looks at him stunned. It’s selfishly cruel to him that he’d suffered from such deep unconsummated ill-fated longing for so long, when the very object of his fixation reciprocated the feeling. It was, well, impossible. 

“You don’t think I’m a stalker?”

“Oh you definitely are, Steve my dear— a Grade A one to boot, but I’m more than your average coquettish victim.”

“So why don’t you get cold?”

Billy holds a finger out to him.

“That’s a conversation we need to have, and I need to figure out how to explain, but until then—”

“I’ve dreamt about you every night for as long as I can remember.”

There’s an immediate rush of adrenaline, followed infinitesimally by shame, and momentarily by remorse. It’s a three layered cocktail designed for his untimely demise. 

At least it's out in the open now. 

Shame is a disgusting emotion. It’s heavy, and nagging and slithers inside your gut like a leech, only growing larger the longer you let it fester. Feeding on your long-suffering. It’s tearful and full of solitude, a parasitic burden carried alone. It’s an emotion of mud and swamps. 

Billy doesn’t really react at all, which considering all the possible ways he could: beat Steve up, or tell him he’s a fucking lunatic— isn’t the worst reception.

The door to the balcony crashes open and Tommy stumbles out, his arm around Eric’s neck.

“There you two are! We’ve been looking everywhere for you— you’re about to miss the big barn fire kick off!” 

Billy glances quickly at Steve. His eyes are saying: please shut up, we’ll talk about this later, don’t say a word to Tommy. It’s a lot for eyes to say, but if anyone’s are up to the challenge— it’s Billy’s. Steve wishes he could tell Billy that he would never tell something of such importance to Tommy— the resident dumb ass of his friends. So he just gives a small nod, hopefully imperceptible to the newcomers before turning his full attention to Tommy.

“Let’s go,” Billy says with convincing intrigue. 

“That’s what I’m talking about Billster! C’mon Steve-o!”

Barn fires are a lot of fun, euphoric in a paganistic maenadic way. Celebrating what’s dead and enflamed, worshipping the released energy and light. 

The firelight dances around Billy’s face, painting it different shades of orange and yellow. 

These are the theoretical colors a planetary collision would create. 

How impossible of a belief to really think that way.

The stars were stained by only the faintest of light pollution, surely if Nibiru were lurking in the night, she’d show her haughty face tonight. 

Maybe she already did. Existing for only a moment before slipping away into the oil slick of eternity. 

________________________________________________

Billy 

________________________________________________

He’d begun his young adult life by dying, as many adolescents do, but unlike most, he never stopped doing it. He would die regularly, every two or three years or so, and nobody could say or do anything to stop him. 

The first time had been different though. 

The ocean brings a sense of absolution unlike anything else. It’s eb and flow relentless and unemotional. Billy had found solace by the ocean after long days, so in a way it was fitting, really, that absolution found him there, ankle deep in the Pacific.

He wishes he could’ve seen who it was. 

He wishes it hadn’t felt so good.

He wishes a lot of things about those early days. 

For starters he wishes someone would’ve told him about being hungry. True hunger, a hunger that clouded even the clearest of vision, and shook the most steadfast of temperaments. Neil didn’t stand a chance.

He doesn’t even remember what he’d said to him. He does remember how good it felt to feed. 

With his hunger satiated he was forced to face the corpse on the kitchen floor. 

The world was down one more abusive asshole. Susan would be beside herself.

He dragged Neil to the ocean in the wee hours of the morning and bid him one last goodbye with a quick kick in the gut before letting the waves drag him out to feed the sharks. 

At this point it was by process of elimination that he put together he was a vampire— either that or a fucking psychopath, so the former was the optimistic approach. 

The realist in him surmised that most likely it was an honest combination of the two. 

He skipped town.

He hopped around the pacific midwest for a decade before tiring of it, there were only so many skaters and punks one could handle before craving something more…all American. He figured he’d give the infamous middle America a try. See how potato eaters tasted. 

Hawkins did not go to plan. 

He’d always prided himself in his ability to maintain a low profile, but in Hawkins all his previous efforts were thrown out the window. What was mundane in Cali was obscene in Indiana. There was a sharp learning curve. 

Steve Harrington also did not go to plan. 

Steve was his own little puzzle. Very much a boy next door type who seemed dead set on tailing him. If he was back in California, this would be normal enough. Gay dating at times felt like an extreme sport— somewhere between getting mugged and getting off - but for some reason the star of Hawkin’s basketball team didn’t seem like his run of the mill taker. Too clean cut, and not nearly enough piercings to be Billy’s average fuck. 

That was the first night he’d spent outside Steve’s ridiculously large house. 

He’d watched him sleeping and felt very far away during the long night. He’d gazed at him, so calm, wrapped up in the bedding. He’d been completely alone next to that sleeping boy. But there’s always that moment, a moment that you think can never possibly arrive, will never actually occur, but which is inevitable, inevitable and wonderful, the moment when he wakes up. He’d emerged from sleep as from a chrysalis and turned to where Billy had just been. He’d looked distressed about something and hastily left the room. 

His duvet had a pool of wetness in the center, the dampness showing as a patch slightly darker in hue. 

He’d dragged a finger through it and brought it to his mouth.

Steve made a noise in the bathroom, and Billy took the opportunity to leave undetected.

He tasted slightly salty, but with undertones— arguably undetectable by non-vampire palettes, of a deep-set sweetness, like that of a flower blossom.

He’d spent the next days keeping close tabs on Steve keeping close tabs on him.

A fun game of cat and mouse where both thought themselves the cat.

In the end it’d been Billy who’d acted though. 

_________________________________________________________________________

“So you’re a vampire?” Steve questions, his eyebrows knit together.

They were sitting in Billy’s car, parked off the side of the road. Billy’s radio was playing some clangey tune that sounded more like tortured cats than guitars and never seemed to end. 

“Yeah, spose’ I am” Billy confesses. 

He looked jumpy the whole evening. It must be nerve wracking revealing something so intensely personal.

Steve’d delt with his fare share of: ‘he’s fucking crazy’ when Billy’d first told him. Billy must’ve sensed it because the next moment he’d brought Steve’s fingers to his mouth and made him touch the impossibly sharp points inside. That’d been proof enough for Steve, and also reason enough to get the fuck away from Billy.

He’d run back to his house and locked every door he’d gone through. Monsters existing is not the kind of realization one was supposed to have when entering the world of adults. On the contrary, he should be getting interested in stupid philosophers, and reading books that were thicker than bricks, maybe watching a movie in black and white with subtitles, all the kind of things typically interesting to perspective college freshman. 

He’d hugged his legs close to his chest in his bed, resting his head on his knees. He could tell his parents about this— surely they should be concerned that a literal vampire had his eyes set on their son! He could also not do that and hopefully avoid the trip to the state sanitarium. 

After a time he’d calmed down. His thoughts became less about Dracula and corpses, and more about how terribly he must’ve made Billy feel. 

A typical Steve move: sympathizing with a monster.

But Billy wasn’t really a monster. The only person he’d killed was his dad, and he deserved it! He surely could’ve offed Steve countless times by now, but for some reason hadn’t. 

He’d felt sleep tugging at him and surrendered thankfully.

He didn’t dream. 

Absolutely nothing, no noises, no fog, no shadows, no Billy.

When he awoke there was no puddle of excretion or softening hard on. 

He should’ve been overjoyed, but in light of the previous day’s calamity found it depressing.

He resolved himself to talk to Billy and apologize. 

Which is how he’d ended up where he was now. Questioning a vampire about how he could possibly be real. 

“But you go to school.”

“Being a vampire doesn’t mean I’m illiterate, dingus.”

“Not that— like the, the sunlight? Doesn't that kill vampires?” 

Billy runs a hand through his hair, his cross earring dangling.

“Also, what about crucifixes— clearly that’s out the window too?” Steve huffs. 

Billy laughs freely, his grin plastered across his face. 

“I wish I were more of an expert on this, but everything I know I’ve learnt through trial and error— and I’m not fully dead yet, so clearly I’m not doing badly. Sunlight doesn’t hurt, and crosses don’t burn. I do show up in photos, and I can see myself in mirrors. I don’t sleep, and I have superhuman strength— well, I’m not fully sure about that last one, but I definitely can out bench press Hercules.”

He takes a drag from his cigarette.

“I can still breathe, and eat, but I don’t really think it’s necessary. More of an old habit I guess?”

Steve nods at him, the whole situation required a suspension of belief. 

“I didn’t dream about you last night.”

“Steve, I’m wounded!” Billy replies in mock devastation, his smile cruel and full of teeth. 

“Fuck off, I mean like, dream dream, Billy. This is the first time I haven’t had the dream in over a decade.”

Billy looks at him clearly contemplating. 

“Look, I believe you, Steve, but I don’t understand how you could’ve possibly been dreaming about me before you even knew what I looked like. As you said, I wasn’t even really visible in it until you saw me in real life.”

Steve rubs at his face, weary, and leans his forehead against his hand.

“I couldn’t see you until then, but I still somehow knew it was you. I don’t even know how to explain it. Seeing you felt like everything was clicking into place. I mean, I even dreamed about your noisy ass car!”

He could hear the accusation in his voice, but it was hard not to be suspect. What are the odds of meeting the figure of your lifelong wet dreams and discovering they’re a fucking vampire, like full on magic shit, yet somehow still having no answers about the mystery that’s plagued your entire existence. 

Billy had no idea though. He said he’d never heard of any of his lovers/snacks dreaming of him. He couldn’t even ask some other vampire about it because he’d never come across one. 

Steve was left with the same conundrum. 

He mopes into his palm. 

“Cheer up, buttercup, we’ve got all the time in the world to get you some clarity.” Billy says, rubbing his back.

“Look at me, Steve.” Billy commands. 

Steve looks at him. He’s still as striking as ever. No matter how many times he’s seen him he’s still taken aback. 

“We’ll figure it out.”

He grabs both sides of Steve’s head and pulls him in for a chaste kiss.

He was right of course, they could search for information, and enjoy the process too. They could jumble around in sheets, and fields, and cars, and lakes. Searching. Kissing. Hunting. Living. 

Billy put his arms around Steve and then draws back a little. He pulls Steve’s t-shirt away at the neck and looks over his shoulders at his back. Steve can tell he's looking at something by the way he stops moving. He isn’t stroking him or kissing him or doing anything else, just holding the neck of the shirt.

“What is it?” Steve asks.

“You,” he says.

Heat dances around Steve’s body and his pulse increases. Desire blooms around him in tiny waves of pleasure. 

________________________________________________________________________

Steve’s back arches up from the bed as Billy grips both of his legs, holding Steve exactly where he wants him.

He licks a long stripe along the erect underside of Steve’s dick before pressing a wet kiss to the head, licking worshipfully along the slit where a small trickle of precum was forming readily. 

It was too much for his meager mortal reserve to handle. His hips pressed upwards, desperately seeking contact.

Billy grins up at him, before pushing him back down, a glimpse of his real strength coming forward. 

Steve moans. 

Billy kisses the inside of his thigh, licking around the spot before sucking at it. His leg hairs create little divots with the wetness and Billy arranges them with his tongue like the sand in rock gardens. 

He looks at Steve and the sight alone could send him over the edge. Billy in the act of debauching is so tantalizing it’s near cruel. 

“Can I bite you, Steve?” He asks with his most velvety tone. 

He can feel the peaks of Billy’s sharpened canines pushing into his skin— not yet breaking the precipice, but dancing just on the edge.

There’s a small wave of panic as he considers his options. From what he knows of Billy he doesn’t think he’d ever hurt him, but the act of having ones blood sucked out doesn’t seem…pleasant. Theoretically though it drives him wild, and in the heat of passion it seems like perfection. 

“Yes — please” Steve whispers. It feels like the dirtiest thing he’s ever said, but he wants this. Wants to give Billy everything. To be what Billy needs to survive. His.

Billy’s mouth presses down the necessary amount for his teeth to slip into him. 

Steve moans either in pain or ecstasy. The two sensations seem to braid into each other in the span of an instant. 

The immediate shock of the piercing sensation on such a sensitive bit of flesh is almost instantly washed away by overwhelming pleasure. The kind of sticky sweet euphoria that only heavy drugs can produce. 

Steve relaxes into Billy’s grip as he laps at him, his muscles relax and his breath rushes out in airy puffs. Billy breaks away only to lick and suck at the wounds worshipfully. 

The term “seeing stars” seemed unfitting to the pure pleasure coursing through his veins. His head tossed back pushed into the pillow, his eyes lidded in an attempt to process the impossible sensations inside him. 

It felt like he had the sun in his mouth, its warm rays sprouting new life in him.

There could be nothing better than it. Even the beds of his nails tingled in delight. 

Then it stops.

Billy lays resting his head on Steve’s other thigh, playing with the small trickle of blood bubbling from his incisions. 

His body was crashing from an inexplicable, unexplainable high, intenser then anything he’d ever experienced. 

He feels incredibly empty. He feels like every ounce of will left to live was dribbling out with the blood from his thigh. 

His head is also absolutely pounding.

“Billy, what the fuck was that?”

Billy raises his head and looks at him, ringlets of hair haphazardly fallen in his face, blood drying sloppily around his mouth.

He swipes a finger through the blood on Steve’s leg and brings it to his mouth.

“You,” he grins ridiculously wolfishly, “are delicious, Harrington”

His teeth are stained lightly with the blood.

“Somehow, Billy— somehow, you failed to mention what feeding entails for me.”

Billy kisses his thighs, moving a hand to lazily paw at Steve’s softening cock. 

“It felt good— no?” Billy quips.

Steve jerks his leg a bit to move Billy off, but Billy firms his hold. 

“Don’t be mad, baby. I just didn’t wanna drain too much too soon. Wait till you climax during it. Might need to keep a respirator on hand for that.”

He winks. 

Billy’s breathing, even during the day, even when he’s busy doing something, is like that of a person asleep. Regular and calm. Steve likes this peace typically, but now in the throws of passions he finds it almost mocking. 

His cock twitches in response to the contact. 

“Now, if you ask me very nicely we’ll see what we can do about this—“ Billy squeezes the base of his dick.

He lazily moves his fist around and places a wet kiss to the top still dewed with precum.

“Unless you don’t want to?” Billy asks, his expression dangerous. It wasn’t an empty threat, he really would leave Steve high and dry.

“Please, Billy.”

Billy firms his grip and moves his hand with more vigor as the member hardens. 

“That’s better,” Billy says into the head of Steve’s cock like a microphone.

He takes Steve into his mouth and sucks.

Steve has had his fair share of blowjobs. Good ones, bad ones, really bad ones (Catrina’s braces nearly cheese grater-ed his dick into mince meat), but none that come close to the talent of Billy Hargrove.

He hooks a leg over Billy’s back and gyrates his hips wantonly. 

Billy only takes him in deeper his nose resting in the tangle of hair at the base.

“Fuck, Billy,” Steve cries out. 

Billy pulls off for a moment and sticks a finger in his mouth before returning to Steve’s cock continuing his ministrations.

The finger soon makes sense when Steve feels it pressing probingly at his butt. 

He’d never done this. He’d also never let someone suck his blood. 

His mouth full of Steve, Billy winks at him before pressing his finger in. He hooks it once inside and sucks even more intense than before.

All at once a familiar burst of pleasure explodes in him. Not as intense as before, but definitely reminiscent. 

He cries out before looking down at Billy, fully expecting to see him literally sucking his dick. Instead he’s smiling like a wolf as he wiggles his finger against the same spot of flesh within him.

He feels it again, but more vigorously. 

He bucks into Billy’s mouth uncontrollably as the boy plays his body like an instrument. Fingering him into oblivion.

He moans as he climaxes. And climaxes. And climaxes.

Wave after wave of pleasure flowing inside him as Billy sucks him through it, that perfect finger hitting the same spot relentlessly. 

Part of him definitely dies during that orgasm. One doesn’t get to experience that much delectation without recompense. 

Billy pulls off of his dick with one last lick, pushing himself up more onto Steve to rest on his belly. 

“Let it be known, Harrington— I am a man of my word.” He says playing with Steve’s happy trail.

Steve lets out a breath of air, not quite laughing, but also not quite cogent enough to form a proper response. 

Being with Billy was an adventure. 

The hit sequel to his life’s movie: “Psychic Wet Dream Weirdo”.

With him he was finally experiencing a new emotion, or perhaps a renewed one. It was rather like feelings he had as a child, the infatuations unclouded by the sexuality that was to hit him like a weight with the onset of adolescence and the dreams. They were raw emotions, which seemed then as though they would last forever. He’d thought they were long gone, were so diluted in his young adult self that he didn’t think about them anymore. He’d had his banal, consensual love affairs, muddied by half-expressed feelings, increasingly permeated and burdened by desire. And then he met him. This boy whose life has become a daily cycle reduced to an utter simplicity, freed from expectation but not desire, sometimes gripped by sadness but more often animated by joy, who died on a beach more than a decade ago. 

If there was one thing Steve wished most for in life, it was that his wet-dreams were prophetic more than pathetic.

With Billy he still wasn’t sure, but he was content enough to figure it out together. 

When he awoke the following morning Billy was sitting at his desk scribbling indistinctly. His sheets were dry.

He smiled watching Billy in a private moment. He got the same voyeuristic satisfaction that’d possessed him those weeks at school.

He was ecstatic to never have to do shamefully frequent loads of laundry again.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanna take a second quick to talk about the process of this fic! I was inspired to reattribute some of the lines from “Trysting” by Emmanuelle Pagano into a fully fleshed short story. Trysting is made up of hundreds of little one sentence to paragraph long bits of text, each independent, and each amazing. I took 6 I adored and used them to make the framework for this fic. Along the way I realized that the aforementioned technique was a fun game to play so I added in 5 snippets from Jean Genet’s "Funeral Rights”. This fic has both Steve and Billy operating arguably OOC. I have no idea why I always wanna write Steve as a really thoughtful + esoterically smart guy, but it’s deep within me. Billy is not the Billy we know, I really, really took liberties with him. Regardless, thanks so much for reading! Hope yah enjoyed Xxxxxxxx As always, biggest luv to Nat who betas for me! Besties 4 life.


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